Life Drawing week 7

A few false starts trying to use pencil left me reverting to charcoal sticks this week. For whatever reason, it felt like I was even slower at getting the gesture poses down than normal. Too much time on the torsos, not enough on blocking out the rest of the figure.

Some doodles, essentially, trying to mess around with line economy, seeing what is essential to the drawing and how to create depth without heavy shading.

I actually really liked the dimensions here but again got caught out with time trying to perfect the back before moving on.

Unfortunately this took some heavy charcoal transfer from another drawing on the way home, but again I quite liked the overall shape. The left leg especially seemed to work well.

The redrawn line of the stomach was a huge readjustment; I held a pencil up to the angle, transferred that across and drew the diagonal line you see from the armpit down, which made me change up the rest of the drawing.

This longer pose took a huge amount of time to get underway and still has some glaring issues, which may have been fixed by including more detail. I didn't really capture the part-turned chest. There's not much to this one, really.

The second model's approach to gesture poses was much more energetic, which really helped lossen up my approach. Even though I don't feel like these were 'good' drawings, at least I was unafraid to just attack the page.

I liked the way these were going, and would have like a couple more minutes to get the legs on and see whether I could represent the weight distribution.

The last piece felt a little disjointed, the arms were too big and I think the angle from which I was looking foreshortened the legs a little and I didn't readjust. Or perhaps it's just the right leg, and if I'd have made it clearer that it was stepping forward the mismatch in the foot position wouldn't have been as bad.

Overall a bit of a stalling week, although I have learned that I should just start the session by loosening up and not worrying out any final product. Again, too cautious.

Charcoal Practice - full study

As much as I enjoy the life drawing classes I often find myself frustrated at not being able to follow through, to finish the drawing to a state where I'm happy with it. Obviously that's the point, to work under pressure and get faster by necessity, but I felt a little pent up last night at not really making the most of the session, so sat down with a reference image from artmodeltips.com and, using Canford Dreadnought Grey paper and a set of compressed charcoal sticks I spent approx. three hours on this piece.

(Click to view large)

It took some getting used to; I think I must have spent at least an hour messing around with the sticks and struggling with the tone to use on the stomach area. I'm still not totally convinced, and think that's the most problematic area, but I think it at least has texture and believable roundness. The shading on the upper chest, under the chin, also caused untold issues. In the end, I felt that I was in danger of tinkering the piece in to oblivion, so I shaded once more and moved on. The left hand seems a little small but when checked against the reference photograph it seemed OK, so perhaps it's just the angle that it is being held at foreshortening it. perhaps by making the fingers taller it would have suggested that better. The foot was an area where, once I had a likeness to a foot, I backed away for fear of ending up with a slab of confused charcoal mush.

I like the highlights; always the best part of using any toned paper. The point of the upper back/shoulder especially helps offset the picture and the hot highlights on the thighs stops it degenerating in to a samey tone of mid greys. I purposely chose not to use a black and white image, or to filter it to black and white, as I may have done in the past, and as I want to force myself to interpret the light as it is rather than using too many assists. A practice like this is only useful if it has some challenge to it.

(Click to enlarge)

Background added just using tonal shades and a lot of smudging

The other challenge was how long it took to dig all the charcoal out of my pores.

Life Drawing week 6

Another week of trying different techniques to get the gesture poses finished in 5 minutes, but I've still yet to develop an effective method. I tried standing back and swiping out the shapes, standing back and tracing the major lines of the shoulder, hip, knee and foot, and still I find myself zeroing in on detail too early, or failing to capture the proportions.

This pose was relatively successful, and probably could have been salvaged to create something once the left shoulder had been dealt with. Again, though, I found myself without the necessary time to get the whole posture on the page.

I tried something different here, just to use big, heavy sweeping lines. Not massively successful.

This slightly longer pose (it may have been somewhere more like 15 mins) allowed at least for some definition and shading to create a three dimensional effect. Aside from obvious struggles capturing a face or the complexities of the hands, I thought this was OK. The foreshortening of the right arm needed work but should have had the hand involved to be effective.

This was my favourite piece of the night, probably the only one that had real promise, although there are definite problems regarding the relative size of the torso to the hips and thighs. The distance from the waist to the hip was too large, so adds extra length overall where it is not needed. Also the calves and feet are too short. The right arm, too, is far too small.

The obvious error here was in trying to add a fully detailed head. It is too large, at the wrong angle, and also just pretty badly drawn. It's a shame, because without it the torso could have worked. The left hand was tricky as only the pinky and next smallest finger were visible so it was always going to look awkwardly undersized. I think the left thigh runs on slightly too long; the knee should be pulled back and the shin allowed to angle more. Another example of the unfortunate tendency to straighten things out rather than capture angles as they are. Quite like the right hand though, for a quick sketch. Just wish I'd left out the head unless I had time to actually draw it as it was.

Next week, I'm going to mix up the techniques again and try using pencil, rather than willow charcoal. Maybe, by using a more forgiving, but more accurate material, I can capture something different rather than the rather heavy going outlines I'm currently finding myself drawing.

Life Drawing week 5

So this week I only kept hold of the drawings made from longer poses. The earlier, gesture poses had very little that made them worth taking home, as in many ways I felt like I had regressed from the first week by over-thinking basic poses and stalling on minor details while failing to capture the overall sweep of the model. However, I reverted back to using willow charcoal sticks and found that, for this kind of work, it really is the best medium, using the side of a stick to block in areas, breaking it down to manageable pieces, using large sweeps, it was far more versatile than the charcoal pencil I had been using.

Again, this led to a few issues with proportion. This piece captured the model quite well though, even if an initial misjudgement meant that it ended up much larger on the page than intended. In the end, I actually quite like that it removes some of the more extraneous parts and focusses just on the rounding of the back and relationship of the hip and thigh, and I thought the left forearm showed the foreshortening. The upper arm needs a little work, the armpit doesn't have the required effect, and I wish I'd have got the outline of the right leg in to balance the piece.

This piece was another example of moving on to detail before nailing down the basics. The shaded line down the back was originally where I'd placed the outer line of his back, and had started working on detail of the left hand and all of the right leg before realising that the whole pose had angle and proportional issues. The small image in the bottom right hand corner was the class tutor giving me an example to work from of a skeletal frame which captured just the basic lines and joints. This gives me a starting point for future drawings, and made me totally rearrange the torso of my drawing here, which I think led to it being at least partially successful. The thigh is still a little short, not by much, but when it's as prominent as it is here is sets the whole picture off a little askew. The head could do with a little size reduction too. The weight running down in to the feet seems decent though, and with a little adjustment the resting forearm of the left arm could be better integrated. The neck could use some detailing, it might help to bring the head in to the rest of the drawing.

From here I will start using the basic line figure sketch to nail down the angles and sizes of the model before I start 'drawing'. I think that being able to break the figure down in to manageable, simple lines is just something that I'll have to learn with practice. It runs counter to how I've taught myself so far, so the hardest part is unlearning or at least postponing those instincts. I think that the desire to immediately start impressing with recognisable detail is holding me back from constructing these images properly from the ground up, which is what is leading to such inconsistent results. Some weeks, quick sketches turn out in proportion and expressive, and some, like last week and this week, quick poses seem sloppy and unfocussed. It really is a case of drilling myself to, at the very least, produce something with the right proportions. Any detail, at this stage, is a bonus.

Life Drawing week 4

We started with a ten-minute warm up this week, and I tried block out, in horizontal lines, my major 'landmarks' (shoulders, hips, waist, knees etc.) before starting, to try and ensure that the page placement wouldn't slip again.

I wanted to get the majority of the pose in but once again found myself hooked on adding detail to the back before finishing the whole pose.

During the three minute to five minute gesture poses, I tried this week to experiment with completely different drawing styles. With this pose, I tried to keep my eyes off the page and on the model, and use bigger, simpler lines. Line economy seemed important in the early stages. In the end the scale and proportion of this pose was way off.

Again, I tried to just draw without thinking. And again, the legs ended up far smaller than the torso demanded. A shame, as I quite liked the line that traced the shade along the rib cage down the side.

Trying to capture the muscle dynamism in the arms. I'd have liked to capture the weight distribution of the legs but these were still very short poses.

This was approximately a ten minute pose, but I don't feel that I captured any depth. I was using a charcoal pencil, rather than willow charcoal sticks, and I think this made me more cautious with the line making and reluctant to layer on shading as I should have. 

Another short pose with proportion issues, that also lacks weight and depth.

We briefly switched models, and this 20 minute study captured some of the brittle physicality of his form. Again, though, without rounded shadowing and contrast it looks too flat.

The last 20 minute pose and, again, a different technique as far as drawing. This time, I decided to stand at a full arm's length from the paper to draw. It made seeing the proportions on the page easier as there was no need to scale up or down. The left leg ended up a little short, and without the required feeling of bearing weight, but other elements worked quite well. The head size is incorrect, I think due to the model naturally shifting during the time and my not adjusting to it. Again, willow charcoal should have been used to give the shading purpose and depth.